Killer
by It'sTimeToDance
Summary: It was never about right and wrong. It was always for revenge. Drabble


_When it comes down to it, I'm just an eccentric billionaire with too much time on my hands._

_Bruce Wayne_

He'd always thought he was different, Bruce Wayne. He always thought he was different from those men who plague the streets, turning on the world that they believe had turned on them. He'd always thought he was one of those few who, despite everything, have that final spark of hope for society, that everyone has that ability to care for something other then themselves. That not everyone on the planet where evil or currupt or ridiculously selfish. No matter how many he met, he still thought he believed in good.

Right or wrong. This is the simple choice. Make others feel your pain, or make sure that pain never happens again.

On paper, yes, it was simple. Easy, maybe not, but simple.

Was the choice really about right over wrong, you have to wonder, or was it about revenge over redemption?

A villian really is all in perspective. To a criminal, the villian is the man who punishes you for your crimes. To a police officer, the villian is the man breaking what you believe to be the law. The law, however, is hard to decipher. Here in Gotham, the law is based from the moral codes of the magority of Americans. Across the globe, however, the law could be whatever one man decides the law to be.

So, is it possible that, to the man in jail, that he had never broken a law? That they could, in fact, be the victim?

The more he thought about it, fingering the torn fabric of his cowl absently in the frigid Batcave, the computer screen glowing down on him, the more he came back to the one question; was it about right or wrong, or was it for revenge?

He was fully aware of how currupt the system was. Painfully aware. Every time he saw murderers stroll out of a prison yard, their smug little grins stretched across their faces, he was aware all over again. No amount of Batmans or Batgirls or Batwomans or Bat anythings could fix it. They'd be back again, in the prison yard, taking one more innocent life with them.

Killers will always kill.

Sad, maybe, but very true.

Bruce Wayne knew this. Unlike the magority, who still posses that child like hope for sympathy where there clearly was none, he had accepted long ago that the human race was dangerously flawed, that all humans could do evil. That _most _humans could do evil.

Rachel had been good. She'd fought for the city run by madness. She spoke for those who couldn't, unafraid for herself, or the enemies she'd so easily made. She _was _good.

Now, because of this, she was dead.

He imagined that glistening handgun up the spiraling staircase into his study, sitting in the mahogany desk drawer, still shining, still fully loaded. Low-tech, for a billionaire of his status, though still as deadly as any other. He remembered how he'd clutched it, his finger ready on the trigger, underneath his trench coat, sitting on the cracked bench of the courtroom. How he'd imagined pulling it out, letting the little fire spark, sending the bullet flying through the air. He imagined how it would have buried itself into that defendents skull.

Would have done it? Would he have become everything his father had hated? If someone hadn't beat him to it, would he really have taken that man's life? Is this why he so violently thrown supposed criminals into their cold little cells, never turning a sympathetic shoulder to them. Because he wished he'd been the first to shoot. Is it true that every time he saw a man with a gun, he'd seen that desperate man's face, twisting with the same fearful starvation that he had those 20-something years ago? Did this, in fact, make him the villian?

Harvey Dent. The White Knight. Fighting the right way. A real icon, not a man in a bat suit who hid in the shadows. He was what Gotham had needed. Someone who could solve problems without having to hide behind a mask. He could have saved the magority, not the singulars. He had put away hundreds of crimals in _one court session_. Batman, on the other hand, roughed them up a bit (in the dark) and tied them in front of the DA's office. It wouldn't even make a dent.

Bruce had thought that Harvey was uncorruptable. Unbreakable.

Obviously, he was very wrong.

One horribly tragic night destroyed every hope Gotham had had. Not only Harvey, but their imaginary idol that helped them sleep soundly at night. Harvey was dead. Harvey had been currupted. Batman was, apparently, a murderer. What did they have now. The police? The police who, until Batman, had done nothing but buy themselves off.

Batman was a killer. Bruce Wayne was a self-centered billionaire. Neither were heroes.

Bruce crumpled the clipped article in his hands, throwing it at the dying fire. He ran the same hand through his usually well-kept hair, throwing his head back against the arm chair. The room, poorly lit, strenched infinitly around him, one moment swollowing him whole, the next creating a never-ending landscape of old dusty furniture and too much space. The portrait of his father glared at him from above the mantle, like he knew what it was he had almost done, or what he'd been doing. Scolding him, demanding him.

Images flashed through his mind. Pictures of the most grotesque, frightening felons. Mugshots of those imprisoned, news paper images of their early release. Harvey Dent's scorched face, revealing tendons and muscle and bone meant to stay unseen. That man, with his gun quivering and his eyes wide with frightened, desperate despair. It doubled, tripled. The gush of blood from his father's chest, dripping to the conrete like a crimson rain.

The man had run, like most do, with his mother's jewelery and his father's wallet.

That day, in the courtroom, he would have shot him. He would have been a killer. That scary part of it was, he wished he had.

_A/N Pure drabble, thought popped in my mind. No point at all. Good I guess if your feelin' a bit angsty._


End file.
